Manager Mark Bonner admits it’s a mess at Gillingham and has outlined how he plans to change things for the better.

The Gills slumped to their third successive defeat on Thursday night with a 3-0 home loss to Bromley - that followed defeats against Wimbledon and Colchester over the Christmas period.

“It's a mess at the moment,” Bonner admitted, following their latest setback.

“The team looks a mess. So many ins and outs, chops and changes, morale low, loads of frustrated people. Me with the players' inconsistencies, the players’ with the inconsistency of coming in and out of the team and not having runs and things changing.

“A little bit of that is down to necessity, of who can do what and players coming back from injury, and a tight time frame of game schedules - but nobody cares about that.

“What can we do? We can try to find a consistent team that can play together, which prior to Boxing Day we did and it returned us two wins and a draw, and then we took that team into Colchester and the inconsistencies of our level was shown.

“Since then competitive, but not enough in the Wimbledon game, and then lots of changes (on Thursday) at the start and then it looks like that. It looks disjointed.

“It's certainly not the intention to be one nil down after six minutes because they just run harder and faster than us and that's not effort, that's just being able to do it really. All the flaws are exposed.

“It's January and I think everybody would probably recognise that over a few windows the dynamic of the squad and the squad needs improving and changing. A combination of lots of things really in terms of what we can do.”

With the January transfer window open, the Gills are in the market for new players, but must also offload too. George Lapslie was the first to leave.

Bonner said: “January is a really hard window to change much obviously.

“There can be changes and developments to the squad certainly, and I think anybody who's taking a team in January is trying to do the same thing. We'll try to do that and hopefully get to a point where we've got a bit more of what we need in order to be the team we need to be.

“At the moment you can easily be forgiven for not liking watching the team and not liking much about it.

“Too often all parts of it look way below the level that it should be. We're definitely not working to try and create that team.

“Lots for us to do, lots for the players to do, lots of ‘stick together’ and all that stuff but at the same time we have to find the level of delivering what's required more often.”

Bonner was asked if he is under pressure as a manager after the Bromley defeat.

“Why wouldn't you be?” he said. “There should be an expectation that we're a better team than that.

“That and too often has been a team that I don't really recognise, or really enjoy watching as well, so we're all the same in wanting a team that looks different to that and in moments it does look like we want it to but it's too inconsistent, it's too incoherent with what we really want to see.

“Everybody's under pressure because runs of defeats, lack of goal threat, positioning in the league table in line with ambition, everyone wants to be at the top, but what we should probably expect from this team at the moment is definitely under performing in that sense.

“I don't think we are capable yet of being one of the top teams but we're certainly capable of being better than we are at the moment.”

Chairman Brad Galinson posted a social media message to Gills fans on New Year’s Eve saying: “We cannot stay in League 2. Our fanbase and owners expect, no demand, higher. We keep going.”

Bonner is in regular contact with the chairman, who is currently at home in America.

“We speak all the time,” said the Gills boss. “We've spoke loads recently and what he's said is no different to what we all said at the start.

“What we all recognise is just wanting something isn't enough and we're miles away from that now. The end point that we all want to get to is the same.

“I think everybody can see and understands that we're a long way from that but also the group at the moment should be and can be and is capable of being closer to it than we are right now, but we're still a long way from it.

“We've got lots to do in order to try to create the change that we need and I think longer term, in terms of strategy and idea of where we need to get to and the process we need to go through to get there, I think we all have very similar thoughts and ideas of what that looks like. Alongside that you have to be better in the short term than we are right now.

“We have to reverse the form and the slide now because it's nowhere near good enough, and at the same time work towards a picture that looks better than we are now, because otherwise we won't get where we want to get to.”

Not for the first time in recent weeks the team were booed off at the final whistle on Thursday.

“I understand the frustration,” Bonner said.

“It wasn't very good (on Thursday) and there's been too many games where we haven't been good enough. I think exactly the same.

“There's periods in games, or parts of games, where it's okay but okay's not enough and we need more than that.

“People will say whatever they say about the team and about me and that's understandable, that's fine. We haven't really got a leg to stand on so we can't really argue that at the moment.

“What I do know is, this club has real potential. I know that I'm good and I know that we've got some good players. At the moment it doesn't look like that at all. We have to change that really, really quickly.

“We need to find a formula and a way of getting closer to where we need to be in the short term whilst trying to build with a long-term picture in mind.”